Like I said on FB, what I like about this comic is that I can clearly see the differences in reactions. There are people who can show their appreciation politely because it’s good cosplay. And then there are the people who reduce the woman to tits and ass. If the first—and especially only—thing you notice about cosplay is tits and ass, you aren’t appreciating it for the right reasons. Take more time to look over the quality of the entire ensemble, its construction, how accurate (or creative!) it is, and how well the person is carrying the character’s persona. If you still insist “BUT I’M A MAN THERE ARE BOOBS I CAN’T HEEEELLLLP IIIIITTTT!!!!” you aren’t trying hard enough to do like any generally healthy adult human being can do and control yourself and your attention, and your best bet is to say nothing and stay the hell away from cosplayers until you can act like said grown-ass adult.
Cool. Cool cool cool.: Did you know? →
White American males constitute only 33% of the population. Yet, they occupy approximately:
- 80% of tenured positions in higher education
- 80% of the House of Representatives
- 80-85% of the…
Online bullying – a new and ugly sport for liberal commenters (by Ariel Meadow Stallings) →
I’m the Seattle-based publisher of a network of lifestyle websites read by roughly one million people each month. Almost all of our readers are women, most of them are educated and many of them are quite politically liberal. Because of this large, diverse and progressive readership, we deal with community issues that perhaps wouldn’t be such a problem on smaller sites. And lately, I’ve started to notice a disturbing trend.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve watched the rise of a new form of online performance art, where liberal internet commenters make public sport of flagging potentially problematic language as insensitive, and gleefully calling out authors as needing to “check their privilege” (admit their privileged position within society and its associated benefits).
As a publisher serving readers who identify as both progressive and marginalised (in many different, varying ways), this issue is hugely important to me – I’m protective of the quality of debate on my sites. As a progressive myself, it’s also complex and challenging because while I very much share the political values of the folks who engage in this kind of thing, I’m not on board with the tactics – which essentially amount to liberal bullying, and are way worse than anything I see from the conservatives who swing by my publications. The sad truth is that when it comes to the motivations behind this kind of commenting, it’s basically the same as the GOD HATES FAGS guys – even though the values are the polar opposite.
….
….
I love learning new things about how cultures are defining themselves. I love that people take the time to try to improve my publications by sharing the latest language that communities are using. I love that readers feel safe enough to voice their concerns. I love this shared concern for sensitivity around language. I love the social justice motivations, and the encouragement that we all be self-aware of how the language we use has powerful, sometime unexpected impacts on the people around us.
BUT. But. Seriously, I’m just not down with:
• The derailing of conversations to debate semantics.
• The need to process it all publicly (“Look at me look at me look at meeee! I am the very MOST aware of my privilege and am therefore the very BEST progressive on the entire internet!”).
• The righteousness.
• The intolerance and inability to respect that those who share your values might not share your opinions on this particular subject.
This is where this kind of conversation begins to feel more like liberal bullying, where the only correct response is agreeing and acquiescing. Any other response is seen as ignorant at best, hateful at worst.
Read the rest of the article here.
[Lupa’s note - These are just a few quotes from what is a really good article on the type of overreactive, self-righteous, hardline black and white social justice warrior activity that’s become so prominent on Tumblr and elsewhere. Chances are the people it’s criticizing will just keep justifying themselves anyway, but reblog this anyway for the sake of those who feel like they’re the only ones who hate this sort of bullying.]
Ok, here’s the deal. It’s true that stopping mind-discussion to criticize someone’s word choice doesn’t actually forward the original conversation.
BUT. Semantics are important. Recognizing privilege is important. And those little offhand comments, and the poor word choices, and the *ist assumptions made by the person you’re talking to, EVEN IF YOU AGREE WITH THEM ON LOTS OF OTHER THINGS, remain SUPER SHITTY. The bottom is gonna fall out of any conversation I have with a male feminist the second he uses the word “bitch” in a derogatory manner, or makes some offhand comment about how sexism in video games is mainly the fault of the Japanese, or takes That Fucking Tone with me. (These things have all actually happened.) It’s a slap in the fucking face, and it’s hurtful and offensive, and it’s just one more thing that people with privilege do every day and don’t even think about, that slowly wears down the people that their privilege oppresses.
These little slurs, these tiny jabs, these unintended injuries, need to be discussed. People don’t even realize what they’re saying. That guy who made the comment about the Japanese to me, when I brought it up later, defended himself by saying, “Well, but that wasn’t even the main point.” The fact is that it doesn’t fucking matter. These things people do amongst themselves — ESPECIALLY people who call themselves allies, ESPECIALLY what they do to the people they claim to be allied with against oppression — are shitty and hurtful. They are exhausting, and miserable, and it is NOT FUN to be on the receiving end of these comments all the time, and then to call someone out on it, and then to be told, “Stop derailing this conversation, that wasn’t even what we were talking about, can’t you see that this just isn’t as important as what we were doing before.”
People have a right to be pissed off when their so-called allies oppress them. And those allies, if they truly want to be allies, should be willing to learn from their mistakes and make a note of these callouts, and NOT GET INTO HUGE FIGHTS ABOUT THEM WITH THE PEOPLE WHO THEY’VE JUST DISCRIMINATED AGAINST, which, tbh, I think is a helluva lot more of a derail than calling someone out on their shitty attitude during a discussion. Especially since those discussions so often center around the very *ism that one party in the conversation just bore out in whatever shitty thing they said to the person they were talking to.
Plus — and we seem to have skirted around this issue so far — at what point do we start giving a shit about oppressive people? ”Waah, you called me *ist, you hurt my feeeeeelings.” Because the fact is, that person whose feelings some pissed-off “liberal bully” just hurt? That person probably just called the “bully” a subhuman. I mean, I’m just saying.
I do agree that we need to talk about these things, especially when there is someone being vicious to another person out of racist, sexist, etc. behavior and thought patterns.
I don’t think this article is about that, though. I’m thinking more in terms of situations with, as the author writes, “The intolerance and inability to respect that those who share your values might not share your opinions on this particular subject”. A good example is the people who jump down my throat for using the word “totem”. I recognize it’s a volatile term and I understand the cultural baggage behind it. I also have my reasons for using it that I have thought long and hard about. I don’t need people to necessarily agree with me; I just want them to not act as though I’m utterly ignorant of the issues. And, again, “The intolerance and inability to respect that those who share your values might not share your opinions on this particular subject”. This is a particular subject with which I disagree with people whom I otherwise agree with on social justice topics in general, to include racism and cultural appropriation.
So the author isn’t talking about SJ warriors going after people who are being very blatantly and insultingly racist, using deliberate slurs to harm. She’s talking about SJ warriors who are so very, very convinced that their perspective is the most right that they won’t allow any other possibility into the field, even from people who have considered their opinions just as much or even more than the Sj warriors have.
I’m not talking about people who are being blatantly, deliberately, and insultingly racist either, though. I’m talking about about people — especially allies — being ignorant and committing microaggressions.
And, well… Here’s the thing. I also think that your example doesn’t make any sense. ”Totem” is a “volatile term” because totems are sacred in at least one Native American religion, and you (not being Native American, correct? and also not being a member of said religion, unless I miss my guess) using that term constitutes a microaggression against members of that religion, because you’re appropriating terminology and concepts from a closed religion AND from a culture that has been and continues to be viciously exploited and oppressed by white people. So really, this is exactly what I was talking about.
The important thing here isn’t your right to have an opinion. We can all have opinions, and we can all have shitty, oppressive opinions, but people with shitty, oppressive opinions don’t get to call themselves anti-*ist allies. The real question is, how important is it to you to not oppress others? You know that using the term “totem” is appropriative — you’ve been told time and time again, by multiple people. Even if you’re not taking any actual concepts beyond the word itself from the NA religion it comes from, given that you get so much shit for it and piss so many people off, why won’t you just pick a different word?
That’s really the heart of the matter here.
Because I disagree that the term is a “microaggression”. Like so many loanwords to English, its definition HAS been changed and altered, and my choice is to use that altered definition as an opportunity to educate people about the history behind the term and how it came into general English terminology.
And this brings me back to the article which we were originally discussing, which is the tendency of SJ warriors to ONLY accept their own opinion (such as the idea that a single word is a “microaggression”) and not even consider that someone can have a differing opinion that may not be the horrible offense they think it is.
ETA: To clarify, I do not feel just using the term “totem” is a microaggression. Using it AND misrepresenting yourself as being something you’re not, such as claiming to be Native when you are not? That I see as an offense. But using a single word that has already gained a new definition, and being very clear about how that definition differs from its original? I do not feel that is an offense, and that is where I specifically differ in opinion.
The other thing is that I get frustrated when someone will discount every single element of my writing and my practice, to include my attempts to engage the pagan/etc. community in discussion of cultural issues, solely on the basis of my use of a single term. It feels rather like overkill, like saying an entire research paper is wrong because a word was misspelled.
Online bullying – a new and ugly sport for liberal commenters (by Ariel Meadow Stallings) →
I’m the Seattle-based publisher of a network of lifestyle websites read by roughly one million people each month. Almost all of our readers are women, most of them are educated and many of them are quite politically liberal. Because of this large, diverse and progressive readership, we deal with community issues that perhaps wouldn’t be such a problem on smaller sites. And lately, I’ve started to notice a disturbing trend.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve watched the rise of a new form of online performance art, where liberal internet commenters make public sport of flagging potentially problematic language as insensitive, and gleefully calling out authors as needing to “check their privilege” (admit their privileged position within society and its associated benefits).
As a publisher serving readers who identify as both progressive and marginalised (in many different, varying ways), this issue is hugely important to me – I’m protective of the quality of debate on my sites. As a progressive myself, it’s also complex and challenging because while I very much share the political values of the folks who engage in this kind of thing, I’m not on board with the tactics – which essentially amount to liberal bullying, and are way worse than anything I see from the conservatives who swing by my publications. The sad truth is that when it comes to the motivations behind this kind of commenting, it’s basically the same as the GOD HATES FAGS guys – even though the values are the polar opposite.
….
….
I love learning new things about how cultures are defining themselves. I love that people take the time to try to improve my publications by sharing the latest language that communities are using. I love that readers feel safe enough to voice their concerns. I love this shared concern for sensitivity around language. I love the social justice motivations, and the encouragement that we all be self-aware of how the language we use has powerful, sometime unexpected impacts on the people around us.
BUT. But. Seriously, I’m just not down with:
• The derailing of conversations to debate semantics.
• The need to process it all publicly (“Look at me look at me look at meeee! I am the very MOST aware of my privilege and am therefore the very BEST progressive on the entire internet!”).
• The righteousness.
• The intolerance and inability to respect that those who share your values might not share your opinions on this particular subject.
This is where this kind of conversation begins to feel more like liberal bullying, where the only correct response is agreeing and acquiescing. Any other response is seen as ignorant at best, hateful at worst.
Read the rest of the article here.
[Lupa’s note - These are just a few quotes from what is a really good article on the type of overreactive, self-righteous, hardline black and white social justice warrior activity that’s become so prominent on Tumblr and elsewhere. Chances are the people it’s criticizing will just keep justifying themselves anyway, but reblog this anyway for the sake of those who feel like they’re the only ones who hate this sort of bullying.]
Ok, here’s the deal. It’s true that stopping mind-discussion to criticize someone’s word choice doesn’t actually forward the original conversation.
BUT. Semantics are important. Recognizing privilege is important. And those little offhand comments, and the poor word choices, and the *ist assumptions made by the person you’re talking to, EVEN IF YOU AGREE WITH THEM ON LOTS OF OTHER THINGS, remain SUPER SHITTY. The bottom is gonna fall out of any conversation I have with a male feminist the second he uses the word “bitch” in a derogatory manner, or makes some offhand comment about how sexism in video games is mainly the fault of the Japanese, or takes That Fucking Tone with me. (These things have all actually happened.) It’s a slap in the fucking face, and it’s hurtful and offensive, and it’s just one more thing that people with privilege do every day and don’t even think about, that slowly wears down the people that their privilege oppresses.
These little slurs, these tiny jabs, these unintended injuries, need to be discussed. People don’t even realize what they’re saying. That guy who made the comment about the Japanese to me, when I brought it up later, defended himself by saying, “Well, but that wasn’t even the main point.” The fact is that it doesn’t fucking matter. These things people do amongst themselves — ESPECIALLY people who call themselves allies, ESPECIALLY what they do to the people they claim to be allied with against oppression — are shitty and hurtful. They are exhausting, and miserable, and it is NOT FUN to be on the receiving end of these comments all the time, and then to call someone out on it, and then to be told, “Stop derailing this conversation, that wasn’t even what we were talking about, can’t you see that this just isn’t as important as what we were doing before.”
People have a right to be pissed off when their so-called allies oppress them. And those allies, if they truly want to be allies, should be willing to learn from their mistakes and make a note of these callouts, and NOT GET INTO HUGE FIGHTS ABOUT THEM WITH THE PEOPLE WHO THEY’VE JUST DISCRIMINATED AGAINST, which, tbh, I think is a helluva lot more of a derail than calling someone out on their shitty attitude during a discussion. Especially since those discussions so often center around the very *ism that one party in the conversation just bore out in whatever shitty thing they said to the person they were talking to.
Plus — and we seem to have skirted around this issue so far — at what point do we start giving a shit about oppressive people? ”Waah, you called me *ist, you hurt my feeeeeelings.” Because the fact is, that person whose feelings some pissed-off “liberal bully” just hurt? That person probably just called the “bully” a subhuman. I mean, I’m just saying.
I do agree that we need to talk about these things, especially when there is someone being vicious to another person out of racist, sexist, etc. behavior and thought patterns.
I don’t think this article is about that, though. I’m thinking more in terms of situations with, as the author writes, “The intolerance and inability to respect that those who share your values might not share your opinions on this particular subject”. A good example is the people who jump down my throat for using the word “totem”. I recognize it’s a volatile term and I understand the cultural baggage behind it. I also have my reasons for using it that I have thought long and hard about. I don’t need people to necessarily agree with me; I just want them to not act as though I’m utterly ignorant of the issues. And, again, “The intolerance and inability to respect that those who share your values might not share your opinions on this particular subject”. This is a particular subject with which I disagree with people whom I otherwise agree with on social justice topics in general, to include racism and cultural appropriation.
So the author isn’t talking about SJ warriors going after people who are being very blatantly and insultingly racist, using deliberate slurs to harm. She’s talking about SJ warriors who are so very, very convinced that their perspective is the most right that they won’t allow any other possibility into the field, even from people who have considered their opinions just as much or even more than the Sj warriors have.
Online bullying – a new and ugly sport for liberal commenters (by Ariel Meadow Stallings) →
I’m the Seattle-based publisher of a network of lifestyle websites read by roughly one million people each month. Almost all of our readers are women, most of them are educated and many of them are quite politically liberal. Because of this large, diverse and progressive readership, we deal with community issues that perhaps wouldn’t be such a problem on smaller sites. And lately, I’ve started to notice a disturbing trend.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve watched the rise of a new form of online performance art, where liberal internet commenters make public sport of flagging potentially problematic language as insensitive, and gleefully calling out authors as needing to “check their privilege” (admit their privileged position within society and its associated benefits).
As a publisher serving readers who identify as both progressive and marginalised (in many different, varying ways), this issue is hugely important to me – I’m protective of the quality of debate on my sites. As a progressive myself, it’s also complex and challenging because while I very much share the political values of the folks who engage in this kind of thing, I’m not on board with the tactics – which essentially amount to liberal bullying, and are way worse than anything I see from the conservatives who swing by my publications. The sad truth is that when it comes to the motivations behind this kind of commenting, it’s basically the same as the GOD HATES FAGS guys – even though the values are the polar opposite.
….
….
I love learning new things about how cultures are defining themselves. I love that people take the time to try to improve my publications by sharing the latest language that communities are using. I love that readers feel safe enough to voice their concerns. I love this shared concern for sensitivity around language. I love the social justice motivations, and the encouragement that we all be self-aware of how the language we use has powerful, sometime unexpected impacts on the people around us.
BUT. But. Seriously, I’m just not down with:
• The derailing of conversations to debate semantics.
• The need to process it all publicly (“Look at me look at me look at meeee! I am the very MOST aware of my privilege and am therefore the very BEST progressive on the entire internet!”).
• The righteousness.
• The intolerance and inability to respect that those who share your values might not share your opinions on this particular subject.
This is where this kind of conversation begins to feel more like liberal bullying, where the only correct response is agreeing and acquiescing. Any other response is seen as ignorant at best, hateful at worst.
Read the rest of the article here.
[Lupa’s note - These are just a few quotes from what is a really good article on the type of overreactive, self-righteous, hardline black and white social justice warrior activity that’s become so prominent on Tumblr and elsewhere. Chances are the people it’s criticizing will just keep justifying themselves anyway, but reblog this anyway for the sake of those who feel like they’re the only ones who hate this sort of bullying.]
John Green's tumblr: I AM PISSED OFF →
I am pissed off because Laci Green, one of the most promising young content creators on YouTube, has been forced off the Internet by death threats—apparently driven by her casual use of the word “tranny” in a video she made more than three years ago. (She apologized and even took down the…
In case anyone is laboring under the delusion that feminism is no longer needed, here’s the front page of the Huffington Post today (July 8) broken down in terms of gender. I don’t think I need to explain what’s problematic.
(note: I tried to only include stories that were specifically about either men or women, so stories that were about both, of which there weren’t many, weren’t included.)
My disillusionment with social justice
I am becoming increasingly disillusioned with and saddened by the current state of social justice efforts, particularly as they often manifest here on Tumblr. The recent debate about cultural appropriation, as well as a lot of the ongoing dialogue about it here, has really caused me to question how this and other issues of social justice are approached.
I am a strong proponent of calling people out for racism, sexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, body policing, etc. I am aware of the continuing currents of disempowerment, the uneven distribution of resources and power, and how oppression permeates our society. I am a member of some privileged groups—white, middle class, cisgender—and some oppressed groups—female, queer, minority religion. So I have a mix of privilege and oppression informing my approach to social justice.
I’ve put a lot of work into undoing some of the worst societal conditioning I’ve been burdened with. I’ve tried really damned hard to check my privileges, to soul-search, and to really examine the workings of cultural appropriation in neopagan and related religious movements. I’ve worked to raise awareness on a variety of issues, and I’ve been grateful to people who have helped me to be more aware of sexism, racism, gender and sex based phobias, and more. When I’ve been on the hot spot and people have criticized my spiritual practices, I have offered up a record of the ruminations and conflicts I’ve dealt with over the years to get to the place where I am today as a way of furthering the discussion AND demonstrating that I’m not just blithely doing whatever I like without reflection.
And yet it sometimes feels like it’s not enough for some people. Not everyone who works for social justice, but a fairly vocal segment thereof. So please don’t take this as a dismissal of social justice itself—just a criticism of some of the patterns within.
Let me say that again, because I want it to be clear:
Please don’t take this as a dismissal of social justice itself—just a criticism of some of the patterns within.
So, specifics. A lot of my disillusionment comes from people justifying making assumptions and not doing their research, all in the name of “calling out the bad guys”. We in the social justice movement have been so conditioned that certain things are bad that some of us will jump at anything that even looks bad, without question. It’s not that we shouldn’t be criticizing racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression. But not every white person who works with animistic spirituality or uses the terms “shaman” and “totem” is ignorant of the controversy therein. I tire of having the same criticisms levied at me over and over by people who obviously haven’t taken the time to familiarize themselves with what it is I’m actually doing, especially when I’m very public about it. Just as I sometimes get tired of explaining to people why catcalls are not complements, I get sick of educating people about “I’ve never claimed to be Native, I am approaching animism from my own social location, not all Native people utilize buckskin in their art, and would you just take a look at my blog to see what I’m actually up to?”
I felt a lot of frustration, too, in some critics’ conscious refusal to look at the links and other writings I provided as a response—not a reaction—to their criticisms. I’m not new to receiving criticism. I’ve been dealing with people criticizing my path on grounds of appropriation for several years, and many times it’s given me cause to explore the issues at hand where they relate to my spirituality. But there have always been certain people who, even when offered something I wrote that directly responds to their concern, openly acknowledge that they refuse to read it. And that has really discouraged me, because here I am trying to engage with someone about something they’ve seen in my work that might need some inspection on my part, but once they’ve made their initial salvo they shut down anything that isn’t “Okay, fine, you were right and I was wrong”.
Some of it is also the sheer toxic levels of condescension I see across the board in many social justice efforts. Even as I am writing this, I’m anticipating someone saying “Oh, poor baby, someone called you out and you didn’t like it, that’s all this is about, any other explanation is a lie, end of story!” And with that, any disagreement I have is turned back on me. And my pointing out what I have been trying in order to address the issues at hand and where I feel I’ve made some progress? “Oh, little special snowflake, do you want a cookie just for doing what any decent person would do?” And on and on, responding to any question or disagreement with the same sort of stock invalidation. Tell me that’s not condescending.
And if someone questions whether the aggressive, condescending tone with which someone makes a criticism is the most effective in a given situation, the response is too often “Don’t you DARE tell me how to be angry! I’ve had enough of people telling me NOT to be angry!” Which again leaves the questioner in the unenviable position of either having to back down, or be painted as an oppressor who is refusing to check their privilege. In fact, privilege has gone from a fairly matter-of-fact statement of advantages of opportunities, to a way to defuse anything that doesn’t match a person’s given understanding of social justice.
Here’s the thing about privilege. Privilege was never meant to be a bludgeoning weapon. It was never meant to deliberately provoke guilt trips in a privileged person for the express purpose of shutting them down and “winning” the debate by playing on the other person’s fear of looking like the bad guy. And yet this is how I see it misused time and again. There is a difference between pointing out “Hey, here’s a situation where you’ve had some advantages that these other people haven’t—think about that and where’s it gotten you” and saying “PRIVILEGE CHECK!” to anything a privileged person says that doesn’t exactly toe the party line to the millimeter.
And this really leads me to wonder about some of the people who are into social justice. Do they actually want to engage with members of privileged groups to try to raise awareness, or do they just want an excuse tell other people that they’re wrong?
You know what this feels like? It feels like being back in junior high, and being subjected to the same sort of doublespeak and word-twisting that bullies used to back me into a corner. They didn’t have to lift a finger. All they had to do was trap me in a tangle of words and spin, taking whatever I said in my defense out of context, so that at the end anything I said was just more fuel for their attacks. It feels like the same sort of disempowerment, justified with “Well, WE didn’t do anything wrong, we were just talking with you, it’s all YOUR fault you’re so butthurt!” Anyone who was bullied knows what that’s like.
You know what else feels like bullying? The swift and often severe reaction on the part of the group to anything perceived as a threat—even constructive criticism. Suggest to someone that a more aggressive tone may not be the most effective way to get the message across to a given audience, and you’ll get dogpiled with people saying the equivalent of “We CAN’T be nice to these people, because they haven’t been nice to US—and so it’s OUR turn to not be nice! We’ve been nice too long! Oh, wait, you’re one of THEM? Take it without complaint, you deserve it!” And, again, there’s the threat of being labeled an oppressor simply for questioning the manner in which we do things like point out privilege and make other criticisms. “If you’re not with us 100%, then you’re obviously against us!”
And then after a while, with those sorts of shutdown again and again, a person starts to give up. It’s just a matter of human psychology that if you consistently block someone any time they try to engage, eventually they’re going to stop trying. There’s no reward in continually being told how bad and wrong you are every time you speak up.
I am a person who wants to listen, who has actively cultivated listening skills because I want to do better. I want to do what’s right. I have been a strong proponent for social justice for years, and I know I still have things I need to work on.
But if the shutdowns keep up, I’m not going to feel like this is a place where I can be supported in that self-exploration. The social justice movement (or individual communities, if you prefer) is going to lose me. The fact is, I feel I don’t have a safe place where I can criticize what I see as some unhealthy and even counterproductive patterns in many social justice efforts. And for that, I contemplate giving up. There’s only so much a person can take before burnout sets in.
Let me make my final point clear: You’re not going to drive me away from my neoshamanism and other spiritual practices. You’re going to drive me away from engaging in social justice efforts at all. Is that what you really want?
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While there are exceptions, as a general rule men do not experience this. That is the difference. Most men never understand this systematic element of rape culture, and most of those who do only did after they themselves were raped. For women, rape is a very real thing whether we have been through it or not because it is forced upon us as a concept for most of our lives. For men, rape is usually something they can ignore unless they are of the minority who has experienced or perpetuated it.
So that is why some people get frustrated when “WHAT ABOUT THE MEN??!!” gets brought up in every single discussion on rape, because then the prevailing culture surrounding rape that women uniquely experience on that systemic level gets ignored. While it is very important to talk about rape culture as it affects rape victims of all sexes and genders, this needs to not dilute or derail discussion about the more subtle and pervasive elements of rape culture that are specific to women as potential, as well as actual, victims.